


in the valley of the shadow of death

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King, Fallout 4
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 03:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9697004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: Noah finds out that he's immune to radiation. The Children call it a gift from Atom, and in their way, maybe they're not entirely wrong.





	

The first thing he’d said was, “I’m coming with you.”

But he didn’t like wearing power armour, felt like he got lost in it, swallowed up– so he wouldn’t accept Noah’s Atom Cats suit. “Plenty of Rad-X ‘round the Commonwealth. I’ll be all right. _We’ll_ be all right.”

Saddlebags full of purified water, Rad-X, extra ammo, and a precious few stimpaks, Noah’s Lone Wanderer carried them to the place where the known world dissolved into pure wasteland. They took the supplies and left the motorcycle there, a sentinel waiting on their safe return.

They faced the Glowing Sea.

Noah swayed on his feet, his eyes distant, as the sound of the Sea reached his ears. A sound that was more than sound, a warbling hum that raised gooseflesh and made heartbeats stutter, that made his nerves itch and his eyeballs burn. Preston hitched a breath, then another, tears standing in his eyes.

He opened his mouth, and for a tense moment Noah thought he was going to cry off, flee back to the relative safety and solidity of the Commonwealth, where the threat was flesh and machine, not… not an unearthly sound, an irradiated no-man’s-land, and a nameless, shuddering fear.

“You took a Rad-X already, right?” he asked instead, his voice thin and higher than usual but still steadier than how Noah felt.

“Yeah,” Noah lied, and stepped into the void.

* * *

He’d intended on it, he really had. But every time he popped the cap on the bottle that morning, he stared blankly into it as if he’d completely forgotten what he was doing, or became suddenly and completely distracted by something else and absently closed the bottle. He realised he hadn’t actually taken any when they were already on the road, and he thought, _I’ll take it when we get there, and just wait for it to kick before we go in. Makes more sense, anyway. Then I might not have to take another before we get to this Virgil’s place._

But when they got there, the Sea took hold and drew him in.  
It was a senseless explanation, but it was the truth. Still he’d eat his own clothing before he’d admit it to Preston. So he lied.

The radiation closed in, and he felt no fear. They walked, Preston close by his side, and his mind sighed open, welcoming the void.

* * *

“Noah. Hey. Noah?”

But Noah was gone, his chapped lips twitching as he murmured and laughed.

“All is silent in the halls of the dead,” he whispered in a musing voice, the warbling of the Sea too loud in his mind for him to hear his own voice, or even know that he was speaking. “All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead–”

“Noah!”

“–Behold the stairways which stand in darkness,” he giggled, feet scuffing the scorched earth as he shambled, unaware. Around him, to his eyes, the landscape was changing, shifting, with every step. So was Preston, who became many people over the course of minutes, like the picture on a television set changing as channels are switched. So was Noah, who at one point stopped being anyone at all. “Behold the rooms of ruin! These are the halls of the dead–”

“Babe, _please!_ Noah! _Stop!”_ Preston sped up and planted himself in front of Noah, digging his heels into the dead dusty dirt and reaching for the bigger man’s shoulders. Looking into Noah’s eyes made his knees buckle, but he managed to stand firm by the grace of… something.  
 _His eyes ain’t blue. They ain’t never been blue. What_ is _this…?_

“The great circuits fall quiet, one by one,” Noah subsided, tears tracking down his face, and fell bonelessly at Preston’s feet.

* * *

_While Preston knelt beside Noah’s body and pleaded for him to return, Noah met the supposed architect of his destiny._

_“Gunslinger,” it greeted him laughingly, without voice._

_“Dark Man,” he said solemnly back, without voice._

_“Ah, so you remember.” The first time they’d met, it’d called him “Soldier.” The second time, “Dead Man”, in mockery of his frozen state. Noah had always called it “Dark Man.” It was as good a name as any._

_“What do you want?”_

_“Oh, cully. I never_ want _anything! I just like to check up on you. How’s the radiation coming along?”_

_“It does not touch me.” Suddenly, Noah knew this was the truth, as surely as he knew his own name._

_“Doesn’t it? Oh, well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it. That’s quite all right, though – plenty of deathclaws about, waiting to snap you and your lover up while we’re here chatting–”_

_“Three times you’ve tried to kill me. Three times I come back stronger. I know what you are, Dark Man, and I know who I am, just as you do – and_ I am not yours.”

_“Well, let’s not be hasty–”_

_Noah imagined his hand. He imagined his gun in his hand, the gun with the odd sigils on the barrel. He imagined shooting the Dark Man, clean between the gleaming red eyes._

“Ah! _Shit!_ Noah, what the hell are you doing?” Preston’s panicked voice awoke him to the gun in his hand, the barrel smoking faintly. He was still laying on the ground where he’d fallen, but the gun was in his hand, and the barrel was smoking faintly. His eyes immediately scanned for Preston, but Preston had been out of the line of fire. Still, he was teetering between freaked out and hopping mad.

“Preston,” Noah sighed, holstering his gun and pushing himself upright. “How long was I out?”

“I don’t know, a minute, tops?” The palaver with the Dark Man had felt like much longer. _Of course it had._

“Sorry about that. Let’s keep going.”

Preston opened his mouth, questions clamoring for space on his tongue, but Noah began to walk across the man-made desert, and because he trusted Noah, Preston shut his mouth and followed.

* * *

The Children of Atom were elated to see him. “You have His gift!” they exclaimed, touching Noah, tripping over themselves to tell him how blessed he was, how favoured.

Noah smiled and nodded, but his eyes were distant. The warbling of the Sea had never stopped, but it abated a bit here– and yet, his mind was getting funny again, like it had when it was at its strongest.

Absently, gently, he disengaged himself from them and stepped further into the crater, as if drawn.  
At the center of the crater grew a rose. _(He would mention it to Preston, much later. But Preston had seen nothing of the sort– just Noah, his Noah, radiant like the sun.)_  
At the center of the rose grew a sun. _("I_ did _see the sun you're talking about... I think. But I… I thought it was coming from you. …Still do, matter of fact.”)_  
At the center of the sun grew a voice, for Noah and Noah alone.

He saw, and listened, and came to understand.  
While Preston and the Children of Atom watched, he fell to his knees and wept. In sorrow, in gratitude, in fear and in hope.

* * *

Next time Noah cleaned his gun, he noticed that the sigils had changed.

From then on, whatever he shot at, he never missed.


End file.
